Old Vintage Cameras: Minolta AL-F

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Minolta AL-F

Minolta AL-F Film Camera, Minolta produced this cool rangefinder film camera around 1967. It has an automatic mode for flash photography called Easy Flash and a hot shoe for the flash. Manual exposure selection offers shutter priority mode with pre-selection of five exposure times from 1/30 sec to 1/500 sec. The frame viewfinder is coupled to a superimposed rangefinder and has a mechanical horizontal parallax correction. For vertical parallax only a parallax arrow. The Rokkor 1:2,7 38mm Lens has 4 elements in three groups and a Seiko shutter. This camera requires a battery, it was originally designed to take a PX13 or PX625 mercury battery, the current version is a 1.35v MRB625 Wein Cell. The camera is in good used condition, the shutter fires and all knobs/levers turn as expected, no other testing was performed. This rare Minolta is used, sold as a collectible, as is. Includes camera, original case ( fair condition a few white paint dots), leather strap, film carry case, empty metal film canister.

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What is a Camera Obscura?

The camera obscura (Latin; camera = vaulted chamber | obscura = dark, thus darkened chamber or room) is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of the inventions that led to photography. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved. The image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce a highly accurate representation. Using mirrors, as in the 18th century overhead version (illustrated in the History section below), it is possible to project a right-side-up image. Another more portable type is a box with an angled mirror projecting onto tracing paper placed on the glass top, the image being upright as viewed from the back. As a pinhole is made smaller, the image gets sharper, but the projected image becomes dimmer. With too small a pinhole the sharpness again becomes worse due to diffraction. Some practical camera obscuras use a lens rather than a pinhole because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus.